Intravenous infusion therapy is often necessary to administer medications or other fluids directly into the circulatory system of a patient. Epstein, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,696,671, assigned to the current assignee and incorporated herein by reference, discloses an infusion pumping system capable of administering multiple infusates at individually programmable rates, volumes, and sequences. This system uses one or more single pump systems each of which pumps all plural fluids through one or more fluid input ports and one outlet port. This pump system increases the ability to administer complex programs of infusion therapies and reduces the time and labor required by nurses or other health practitioners in setting up and monitoring infusions while improving the reliability of proper infusion.
One or more infusions to be administered to a patient are prescribed by the patient's physician. A pharmacy, generally located within the patient's hospital or clinic, makes up the infusion according to the physician's prescription. The pharmacist places the infusion solution in a bag, bottle, syringe, or other container and labels the container. The label contains data to identify the patient, physician, medications prescribed, and a control number. The label is generally typed or printed in human readable characters only. The container is transported to the patient's location. A nurse or other health practitioner hangs the container from a rack. The nurse runs a tube from the container to the infusion pumping system, such as that disclosed by Epstein, et al. for pumping or gravity feeding the infusion solution to the patient. The nurse then enters all data regarding the infusion program manually, generally through a keyboard, into the pumping system. The data includes, for example, the rate of infusion, the total volume to be infused, and which of the plural lines the infusion is to use.
Hospitals maintain a large inventory of drugs that are kept up to date in volume and availability and size scaling. In addition, each hospital may develop its own vocabulary of drug identification and relies on pharmacist expertise to prevent incompatible drug administration. Manual treatment of this type of infusion system data is disadvantageous because it is labor and time consuming and the possibility for incorrect data treatment is greater.